Goodbye Caroline
by Kessie-Louise
Summary: Caroline knew that Cave left her in charge of Aperture after his death, but she didn't realize that wasn't the only thing he wanted after his passing. Based on the Ratman painting in Portal 2. One-shot.


"What wonderful projects girls!" Caroline raved, looking at the projects the 'Bring Your Daughter To Work Day' girls had brought. She stopped at a volcano project.

"What an interesting... idea Heather." Caroline said to the owner of the project, a tiny blonde-haired girl only about 6 or so. The child blushed.

"Thank you Miss Caroline. Mommy didn't tell me about today until the last minute, and I did what I could."

"Improvisation is a good thing." Caroline told Heather. "It goes along with thinking quickly in the face of danger."

Heather's eyes grew wide, and smiled just as wide as well. Caroline looked over to Chell, another girl about 11 years old, who was glaring at Heather.

"Hello Chell." Caroline smiled at the girl. "I thought your father wasn't going to bring you here today...?"

"Hello Caroline." Chell said, turning her attention away from Heather. "I forced Dad to bring me here. I like it here Caroline. I do, really. There's something so... appealing to this place. You know?"

Caroline smiled.

"I know what you mean."

Then Caroline looked around, then got down to Chell's height to whisper,

"If there ever is a day that I can no longer run this place, I'm going to let you take over for me."

Chell looked around before whispering back,

"Really?"

Caroline leaned in closer to Chell.

"Really." and she gave Chell a wink.

"Miss Caroline." a worker said, coming in an almost rushed way. "We need you for the activation of our new AI."

Caroline rolled her eyes.

_I hate being in charge here,_ Caroline thought. _Something almost always goes wrong... and it was more than often because of Cave..._

Caroline followed the employee to the site where the new AI was to be turned on.

"Well...?" Caroline asked, standing in front of the AI. "Turn it on."

The scientists looked at each other.

"We can't do that without you." one of the scientists told her.

"And I'm here." Caroline impatiently responded. "Turn the AI on."

"Not... like that." another scientist told her.

"What do you mean, 'Not like that?'" she asked, almost in a demanding way. The scientists looks at each other, but nodded.

"I'll start the recordings." a scientist said.

"What recordings?" Caroline demanded. In a few minutes, she got her answer.

"The point is," a familiar voice said over the intercom, "If we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we store a man's intelligence and personality on one? So I have the engineers figuring that out now. Brain mapping, artificial intelligence; we should have been working on that thirty years ago."

"Cave..." Caroline mouthed, after not hearing the voice in so long.

"I will say this, and I'm going to say it on tape so everyone can hear it a hundred times a day: if I die before you people can put me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place."

"Sir!" Caroline shouted, forgetting she was only listening to a recording.

"Now, she'll argue," Cave coughed, "She'll say she can't. She's modest like that, but you make her!" Cave coughed again. "Hell, put her in my computer. Alright, test over. You can head on over to your desk."

Caroline shook her head, not believing what she was hearing.

"Mr. Johnson! Mr. Johnson, I don't want this!" she cried. The scientists looked at each other, and started to go toward Caroline.

"I don't want this!" she said to them, but they didn't stop. Caroline struggled away from them, and looked at them with a horrified look.

"You're monsters! You're all monsters!" she cried. But that didn't stop the scientists, they took a firm hold of her and started to lead her to a chair resembling one of the 'electric' kind.

Caroline bucked the scientists off and started to run away from them. She looked at them.

"You all deserve to die just like Cave! This... this isn't science anymore! Hell, it NEVER was about science! If... if I had the power, I would... would kill all of you! The entire facility if I have to!"

Quickly, Caroline looked for a way out, but one of the scientists had closed all the doors. Then, she saw a pair of scissors. A fearfully sharp pair scissors. She ran over, seized the scissors, and held them toward the scientists. The scientists backed away from her, then she did the unthinkable.

"I exposed Cave to the moon dust." she said, slowly raising the scissors to her chest. "I wondered why Cave didn't listen to what our accountants was saying to him. He started experimenting to only hurt innocent people, and I secretly hated him for it. I gave him the idea of the conversion gel. I knew we didn't have enough money, and I knew he would go against their wishes of the project. Cave Johnson was a monster. He didn't care about money, or REAL science, or even the satisfaction of knowing he did something great for mankind. No. He just liked seeing people be malformed and mutant.

"I didn't take into account that Cave would actually place me in charge. All I thought was that the facility would fall due to his lack of being there. But no, he wanted me to take his place. I should have had known. Now I am taking his place in his damned computer."

Caroline then plunged the scissors into her chest, blood didn't waste it's time coming straight out of her chest. Her heart had been struck straight in the center.

"Tell Test Subject #1498..." Caroline laughed as death came closer, "She's in charge now."

"Quickly!" one of the scientists demanded, "Before her brain waves stop! We lost Johnson, we ain't going to lose her!"

The scientists didn't waste any time shoving Caroline's bleeding body into the chair, then type several commands into a nearby computer.

"Fools." Caroline whispered, seconds away from death. "You're all going to die..."

"Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System online." a more robotic version of Caroline's voice announced as Caroline was officially dead. The scientists relaxed, they had fulfilled Cave Johnson's last request.

"Oxygen levels are at 50% in the Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System main hub."

The scientists started to panic again.

"Oxygen levels are at 20% in the Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System main hub."

"What are you idiots doing?" one of the scientists shouted, "Unplug it! She's going to kill us!"

As the scientists scrambled to find a way to unplug the AI, one went to an intercom and shouted,

"Someone! Anyone! The AI is shutting off the oxygen! Get any young test subjects out of here! Someone go to the main breaker room and shut this damn thing off!"

By the time the AI was shut off, the scientists were more dead than alive when help came into the room.

"Dear God, what happened in here?" someone asked. A man commonly nicknamed 'Ratman' looked at the damage, and saw Caroline in the chair.

"A monster was made into an even more dangerous monster." he said.

"What the hell are you talking about?" his partner asked. "Come on, we have to get these bodies out of here before they start stinking up the place."

Meanwhile, a small figure lay on the ground of where the Bring Your Daughter to Work Day was held. It groaned, but didn't move. A party escort robot came by, in search of anyone left behind.

"Thank you for assuming the party escort position." it said, dragging the figure away.


End file.
